THEATRE REVIEW: The Winter's Tale, Liverpool Cathedral

Aug 1 2008 by Ben Schofield, Liverpool Daily Post

THE Winter’s Tale performed by actors from London’s Globe Theatre raised the curtain on the 2008 Liverpool Shakespeare Festival last night.

Dogged by poor acoustics, the performance at Liverpool Cathedral was nevertheless a glowing tribute to the Shakespearean productions of yore.

Globe Theatre’s artistic director, Dominic Dromgoole, says his touring company goes to places with "a bit of magic and charisma" and the choice of the Cathedral as a venue was due to its "historical resonance, authority and power".

But it seemed the company had to battle against that very same power in making their lines heard.

Along with being an acclaimed Shakespeare company, the Globe is also deeply purist.

And Dromgoole and Winter’s Tale director John Dove stayed true to the Jacobean model in ways other than the choice of venue.

A crew member told us before the lights went down that, to be in keeping with Globe policies, they had decided not to "mic" the show.

Even that announcement was drowned out by its own echo – a struggle taken on valiantly, but not altogether successfully, by the players.

While perhaps up to a quarter of the Bard’s dialogue was lost among the cloisters and in the vaulted ceiling, the Cathedral’s north wing nave provided a warm nest for the play and spectators.

With seating on only one tier, audience members were encouraged to spill on to the steps.

And with the simply-dressed stage directly underneath the bridge, an intimate atmosphere developed.

As the actors jogged up and down the central aisle, the 150 or so spectators were teased into the action.

It is difficult to imagine how performances in more traditional venues could achieve such a sensation.

Indeed, Dromgoole – who initiated Globe Touring last year by taking the company on its first tour in 400 years – says the whole idea is to recreate Shakespeare as it was in his day.

The play tells the story of how the king of Sicily’s mad rage at his wife’s supposed infidelity rips his family apart and drives his childhood friend, the king of Bohemia, away. He puts his wife, Hermione, on trial and banishes her to jail. Their newborn daughter is taken from Sicily and left for dead - in Bohemia, it emerges.

While all that is far from amusing, the action shifts gear when Antigonus, charged with leaving the babe in the wild, "exits, pursued by a bear".

A cast of eight took on multiple roles throughout the play.

The troubled King of Sicily was effortlessly played by John Dougal, who also filled the role of the Old Shepherd who finds the King’s abandoned daughter. As the mad and suspicious husband Dougal appeared to give up taming the echo and rather used its booming effect to his advantage, providing a resonant shudder to illustrate his mania.

Sasha Hails, as Hermione, was excellent too with Fergal McElherron’s Autolycus another highlight. The programme describes the character as simply a "rogue" and he drove almost all the laughs in the second half, lilting from an Irish-accented peddler to a Scottish pseudo-nobleman.

The Winter’s Tale plays each night at 7.30pm until Monday, with 2.30pm matinees on Saturday and Sunday.

An open air cinema from Thursday, August 7, to Saturday, August 9, will show different Shakespeare adaptations, before a nightly outdoor run of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the cathedral’s St James’s Gardens by the actors of Lodestar Theatre Company, the organisation behind the festival, from August 13 until September 7.

benschofield@dailypost.co.uk